Flowers
by Kitt Chaos
Summary: A familiar sword marks an impossible grave. Anger builds in the heart of an old woman at the sight. She may be old, but Leila isn't finished yet. Warnings: AU, character death, slight language.


**Flowers**

A Vampire Hunter D alternate-universe short story by Kitt

Disclaimer: Vampire Hunter D is the property of its talented creator, Hideyuki Kikuchi. I own no part of or rights to Vampire Hunter D, except for a deep appreciation and quirky affection for the characters and the world Mr. Kikuchi created for them.

Summary: A familiar sword marks an impossible grave. Anger builds in the heart of an old woman at the sight. She may be old, but Leila isn't finished yet. Warnings: AU, character death, slight language.

**--**

"I never thought you would die before me," the old woman murmured, gazing sadly at the hilt of the sword the blade of which was buried in solid rock. She knew of only one arm that possessed the kind of strength to perform such a feat at one thrust -- and that arm lay buried beneath her. "My friend, I should have died first!"

_"I never thought you would die before me." The most discerning ear could hear the subtle timbre of sorrow and longing in the ostensibly neutral tone. He supported his left hand with his right, gazing down into his own palm while a spasm of pain and loss first marred, then rendered his features transcendently beautiful. "Old friend, I thought I would die before you."_

"How did it come to this?" Leila demanded. For, though stooped with age and bearing the tracks of time's unwanted attention across her face, that's who the old woman was.

"I don't know. I found him here." The younger woman pointed to the side of the grave. "He'd dug it deep, I guess with his sword, before planting the blade in the rock, and collapsed right here."

"So, this is where he died?"

"No. He was still alive when I found him, raving in a fever. I, I couldn't leave him, even though he was scary. No one in such need should be left all alone. I took him down to my house--" She waved her arm toward the modest house hidden in the trees at the bottom of the hill. "--thinking I could -- help him, somehow..."

Leila spared a moment from her own grief to regard the woman. Love at first sight, she diagnosed. Not that she blamed the younger woman. It had very nearly been that way for her too. D had been just such a man.

"It was poison, he said," the young woman offered. "And later, when he was raving, he said it was from his own hand? He wouldn't have -- poisoned himself, would he?"

"No!" Leila snapped. "There's no way he would have poisoned himself on purpose. Not him. Not ever."

"I'm so sorry that I couldn't help him!" the younger woman cried out, sinking to her knees. "I know all the poisonous plants in these hills and all the antidotes for them, but he didn't respond to any of them. He just kept getting weaker and weaker..."

_"I'm sorry I failed you," he stated, looking down into his inert hand. "My responsibility to safeguard you, and I failed. Fitting that my end should come to me through the agency of that failure." The silence, both physical and mental made him wince. He'd not been this alone in years. He never would have thought that he would miss the mental chatter of his companion, even if the absence of that chatter did not portend his own end._

"How--how did you, know him?" the young woman asked, driving down the tears that threatened to pour from her.

Leila looked back over the years to when she had been a young, lethal, and bitter hunter. It was odd; none of the Marcus brothers had been able to give her the absolution she needed to let go the life of the hunter, and despite Kyle's overt appreciation and Grove's covert feelings, not one of them had made her feel like a woman. It had been D, in a way she still didn't understand, who reminded her that she was, at heart, not a hunter, but a woman. It had been Meier's love for poor, doomed Charlotte that started the longing for someone to love in her. Following that longing, Leila had found her life again and left the world of vampire hunting to those best suited for it.

Like him. She followed his exploits, as best she could. D had a sort of fame, or infamy, attached to his name. Following the stories of him for only a year showed Leila that the Marcus brothers, for all their skill and success in hunting vampires, were as mere children to him. If she'd not seen him fight for herself, Leila would have counted many of the exploits attributed to D as tall tales. But, she had seen his power and grace. She knew his strength and will, having seen both for herself. She knew the stories, many though there were, were true.

"What could have laid you six feet under, my friend? I should have died of old age and been long buried before you'd even finished adding the luster to your legend. I should have died long before you."

_"I never got to say good-bye," sadness laced the light tone of his voice. "The attack was too sudden and unexpected. You were gone before I even knew you were the target."_

"Well, then," Leila stood up suddenly, shaking her skirt out with an impatient, decisive gesture. "There's got to be some watering-hole near this place."

"Watering-hole?" the girl asked, wondering what Leila was talking about.

"A bar, a saloon. Some place for men to play cards, get drunk, and brag about their miserable lives," Leila clarified.

"Yes, in the town there's a bar, but, what are you...?"

"Men talk, especially when they've been drinking. Something happened to D, someone knows what it was. I'll figure out what that something was..."

The girl blinked up at her from her place still kneeling by D's grave.

"...and I'll make the miserable son-of-a-bitch pay!"

"I, I thought you just wanted to leave flowers...?" The girl's voice trailed off hesitantly.

Leila's eyes, though faded with age, snapped green fire at her.

"I haven't earned the right to leave flowers at his grave. Not until I find the bastard, or bastards, who did this to him."

Staring up at the resolute old woman, the girl shuddered. She'd never want to be on Leila's bad side, she realized. And D... She had cried when D died. She didn't know him, except as a man dying from a poison-induced fever, but still she'd cried for him.

"What can I do to help?"

"Can you see the grave from your house?"

"No, but I -- I visit it nearly every day."

Leila felt another spurt of pity for the girl.

"I -- know." the girl smiled sadly. "Even alive he would be unattainable for me, but..."

"One year," Leila interrupted her. "Check the grave every few days for one year. If, in that time, you do not see flowers, send word to my family that I have died. And you -- pack up, leave your house, burn it to the ground if you have to, but stop moping for him. I knew D, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, he never would have paid the least attention to you."

The girl sucked in her breath sharply at that.

"I'm not being cruel, simply stating a fact. There's nothing wrong with you, it's just... He was a dhampir. He fit in no world but the one of a hunter -- a vampire hunter at that. Having been a hunter myself..." Leila's eyes unfocused as she gazed deep into the abyss of her own memories. "There's no room for love, softness, or comfort. There's no room for anything but instincts honed to a lethal sharpness, reflexes trained to a point where you shun towns afraid of what you might do to normal folk if they should accidentally brush too close to you, and the hunt. Following the blood-spoor of the vampire, knowing that wasted lives and ruined families lie behind you, and ahead is only a path filled with the vile monsters and callous 'Nobles' responsible for all that human misery."

The girl raised her hand as if to touch Leila's arm and offer some mute comfort, but stopped at the haunted eyes the old woman turned toward her.

"D would never have paid the attention to you that you dream of, but he would not have wanted you to throw your life away pining for him. So, if you see no flowers within a year's time, send word to my family, and leave here yourself. Find a bustling town, as far from vampires as you can get, fall in love, get married. Or, use your skills to be a healer. But, whatever you do, surround yourself with people, not this isolation, and start to live your life not staying mired in useless, hopeless, childish dreams."

--

It was not quite a year later that the girl looked up from where she was kneeling and weeding her herb garden and noticed the riot of flowers on the grave. She had cut enough of the trees between her house and the crest of the hill away to make certain she could see it. She got up, brushed the earth from her hands against her skirt, and ran up the hill.

The old woman was there, quite a bit worse for wear. The lines in her face were deeper, her aged form even more lean that before. She smiled tiredly at the younger woman's approach, and looked down into her lap where she was tying the stems of flowers together into a daisy chain.

"I did it," she said.

"Let me help you," the woman offered.

Leila nodded toward the mound of flowers. "I could use your help. I don't think I've enough energy to complete this task otherwise."

The girl shot a troubled look into the older woman's eyes. Healer that she was, she recognized it. The dark awareness swimming in Leila's tired eyes showed that she was aware of it, too. "What better place for me to be as I die, and what better work to be doing, than this? But, enough of that. Let me tell you what happened to our friend here." Leila patted the earth of the grave under her.

"Please," was the younger woman's only reply.

"Well, it started when he took on the job of killing Baron Svandhelm." The girl gasped, as that particular vampire was well-known for his advanced age, power, and inordinate--even by vampire standards--cruelty.

"D was a quiet man, not given to words even when they were called for. Half-human, half-vampire hated by both for his mixed blood, feared by humans, disdained by vampires -- it's no wonder D kept secrets. Indeed, who was there to share them with him?

Perhaps his most closely guarded secret was the existence of an entity living in his hand. Maybe it was shame, or maybe he didn't want to see another level of amazed wariness enter the eyes of everyone he met. Who can say? I've seen D fight, our paths crossed numerous times as we chased Meier Link through the Barbarois lands and beyond to a showdown I will never forget in Chaythe Castle, and I had no clue that such a weird creature even existed.

It didn't surprise me too much that the hunter in me came to the fore when I called upon her. All my old skills, honed in the company of the Marcus brothers, were still there, simmering below the surface, and easy to reach. I wasn't as quick and agile as I had been before, heck, I'm old now, but the mental skills are all still here."

Leila paused to rub the joints of her hands. The whole time she'd been talking she continued to tie the flower stems together. She let her gaze drift toward the distance. A breath as deep as her faltering lungs could manage bore the mingled aromas of the flowers surrounding her. She imagined the clean, bright, natural scent chased away the charnel stench of the vampire's castle from her blood. _Peace._ She looked over at the gentle mound of the grave, now buried in flowers, and the sword that stood like a sentinel over it, proclaiming the forever silent occupant to those who cared to see. _Just a few more moments and I can let myself slide into this gentle peace... Your story needs to be told to the end, my friend. Even if none but this love-struck girl ever hears it, your legend needs to be completed._

"Baron Svandhelm had rebuilt his power-base after his encounter with D. He sacrificed much in order to secure his victory over him. Three of his castles, and nearly all the denizens within, and many of his closest kin had been used, and destroyed, in the baron's plan to defeat D.

The baron, you see, had been keeping tabs on D for -- well, perhaps for centuries. He was concerned that if D were ever to target him, he might not survive the encounter. He used his influence and network to gather information about D, not merely the exploits that were public knowledge, or the names of the vampires he killed, but, as far as he was able, the methods D used to fight so many vampires with such deadly effectiveness.

Who knows when D might have slipped up and let some hint of the existence of his parasitic partner escape? That's what the creature in his hand was. A parasite, existing in some sort of symbiotic union with the dhampir -- at least that's what the baron thought. He'd heard of such beings in the ancient past, though his verifiable research did not indicate they did other than take over and absorb their hosts. Such a symbiosis as D seemed to have with this creature had never been hinted at. But, that was D. Always doing the unexpected. The baron told me an unbelievable story of an ancient dhampir who fought against a mutant who could bend space and time to his will. This mutant supposedly killed the dhampir, but a parasite like the one D had, raised him from the dead. The baron was convinced the 'ancient dhampir' _was_ D, but I don't believe that's even possible.

The baron reasoned that D's extraordinary abilities, especially how he seemed to be able to recover from what should have been lethal wounds, must be the actions of the parasite. So, he devised a plan to kill D before D killed him, by taking away that advantage, first.

These parasites, and I hope no one ever sees such a creature again -- perhaps D's was the last one -- are resistant to physical damage, as long as they have a host. The baron told me their very natures make them resistant to mystical forces, too. I'm not sure I believe in 'mystical forces', but the baron did. In my experience, 'mystical forces' always have some sort of grounding in mundane reality, and science. At least, Grove's 'mystical abilities' did. Poor, doomed bastard.

The baron was a real piece of work, you know? He used his consorts, his friends, even one of his brothers, gleefully sacrificing their lives to attack D, distract him, target his left hand--where the parasite lived--and kill it."

--

D blocked an attack, discovered an opening in his opponent's defense, and delivered a killing stroke. Before his next heartbeat, a new opponent took the defeated one's place. He wondered at that -- the fighting skills of these mutants and vampires was not high enough to wear him down with their sheer numbers as he barely exerted himself with each kill. There was no way they could delay him long enough for Baron Svandhelm to escape, either. He wondered about it, but they kept him just busy enough he couldn't devote enough attention to figuring the puzzle out.

He reached into the special compartment in his utility belt as he delivered yet another killing thrust. A random grab with his left hand scored him a handful of rough, pointed, wooden needles. He sent a spray of them into the mixed group of monsters and vampires to his left, while leaping over most of the throng on his right. If he were free from attacks for a moment or two, he was sure he could discover why this battle was not unfolding as so many countless of battles before had.

An arc of lightning striking the ground where he intended to land denied him that moment of freedom he was seeking. Twisting in mid-air, he vaulted off the wall and changed his landing spot too fast for any one to catch him. Unfortunately, it was in the midst of the monsters he'd nailed with his needle spray. Many of the vampires were down, if not dead, from that barrage, but most of the mutants were merely injured -- and angry. D found himself beset by ferocious attacks.

Random jolts of electricity darting in and among the fighting were a new, dangerous element to this melee. Still, the lightning attacks were more often than not taking out those opposed to D. There was a pattern in the lightning strikes, but again, D couldn't devote enough attention to discerning it.

Twin lightning strikes, one on top of the other, along with a three-pronged weapon attack gave him the answer. A regrettably familiar soul-jolting thrill shot through him. He'd suffered mortal damage -- a killing stroke. Walking so closely with death, so deep in its shadow that he himself had become death's most gorgeous avatar, D didn't fear it. He'd crossed the boundary between the living and the dead more times than he cared to count. Were he to indulge in waxing philosophical, such journeys made a cosmic sort of sense, given his innately warring dual nature.

This time, however... This time it was different. The sickening wave of his mortal injury didn't pass and resolve into a single point of agony as it usually did. A miasmal wave of nausea, pain, intolerable heat, and implacable cold crashed against the shores of his being over and over again. Confused, disoriented, he glanced down thinking to question...

His Left Hand. The parasite, the handicap, the helper, the burden, the companion... He'd lost the symbiote before -- his hand had been cut off more than once -- but it was imbued with a strange and tenacious hold on life and had always returned to D. Those times when an attack was strong enough to cut even D down, it had been his Left Hand bringing back across death's threshold.

But now...

Left Hand was a charred and ruined mass of flesh, and bubbled, blackened shreds of skin around a twisted, broken, fused mass of bone. If Left Hand's weird and disturbing face were visible, even D, with his subtle and acute dhampir senses, was not able to perceive it.

He realized it in an instant. This was the one push through death's door he wouldn't be able to resist, or with Left Hand's help, return from. Losing a hand, D had done that often enough before, was bad. Blood loss from that injury alone could kill a human if not staunched. Fortunately, such an injury was less troublesome for a dhampir, and D especially, but this --

Left Hand hadn't been cut off. Left Hand had been killed while still attached to D. The inner miasmic disquiet was the natural result of that, as the physical, biological connection he had with Left Hand spread the lethal toxins generated in the parasite's flesh at the moment of its death through D's systems.

A sound battered its way through the maelstrom of D's own pulse pounding against his eardrums. He would have ignored it, except it was so very out of place. Birdsong.

He looked up, and forced his eyes to focus through the nausea and pain. Leaves. Deeply dappled sunlight. The earthy, cloying, yet still somehow uplifting odor of gently rotting vegetation. He was in a forest.

He understood. Somehow, at the moment Left Hand died, it had transported them out of what had become a deathtrap. D had no way to know how far from Baron Svandhelm's castle the parasite had managed to transport them. The disorienting, inescapable toxin reaching inevitably for his brain made it nearly impossible to think.

"You got us out of there," he said, staring down at the ruined mass that had once been his hand. "Now what?"

Possibilities flowed across his mind. It was far too late to simply cut off the remains of the parasite. The very moment it had died, D knew he had been lethally poisoned. Perhaps if he buried himself, the regenerative properties of the earth would bolster his failing systems and give him the strength to fight off the poison. Even as he thought this, he knew it wouldn't. Perhaps he could find a town, a healer, a doctor... He shook his head. He doubted even _he_ couldn't stop this now -- if _he_ were even around and willing. D could feel the death creeping through him. For as many times as Left Hand had pulled him back to life -- this time it was dragging him with it into death.

The pain spiraling through him intensified. D fell to his knees and clutched his head. This wouldn't do. At this rate, it would take days for him to die, and if someone were to chance upon him as he underwent his death throes, D could very well destroy them.

Resigned, he staggered his way to the top of a modest hill, and began to dig. If he were buried deep enough in the earth, he wouldn't be able to break free to hurt anyone as his agony increased and his strength waned. While he was taking a rest in his self-appointed task, as his strength and reserves were so much more shallow than he was used to, he began to talk.

"I never thought you would die before me."

--

"I know a bit about some of the stranger forms of life we're forced to share this misbegotten mudball with. There are some creatures that the very moment they die excrete poison so venomous that to even breathe the same air might well kill you, too. Since D said he was poisoned, by his own hand, and the damned parasite lived in his hand, I think, perhaps, that's what killed D.

The baron planned on facing D himself after the supposed advantage of the parasite was gone, but D was nowhere to be found. He searched the castle he used for his ambush, and the grounds around it, but couldn't figure out where D went, or how he eluded him. It is anybody's guess how long D wandered, inevitably being poisoned by the dead parasite hanging off his arm, before he found himself here. You know what happened from that point on."

"Not entirely. How did you find all this out? And what happened to Baron Svandhelm?"

Leila smiled weakly up at the younger woman. During her explanation they had finished weaving the flowers into an impressively long flower chain, and festooned the sword serving as D's gravestone with so many flowers that none of the metal was visible. The simple act of talking had weakened Leila until she finally stretched out on the ground, and placed her head in the girl's lap. Each woman knew that death was only a moment or two away.

Leila reached a wavering, but determined hand up to place it on the flower-bedecked sword. "Our promise, from so long ago -- is there a hell, D? Heaven wouldn't want such as you and I. Our hands have bathed too often in blood. Is it fitting that the last blood to lave my hands is that of your killer? These old bones of mine lasted long enough to find him -- and avenge your death. I earned the right..." Leila's hand fell away from the blade. Her voice dropped into a whisper. "I found your slayer, D, and I killed him. I earned the right... to leave flowers... on your grave."

The girl couldn't help but catch a sob in her throat as Leila, with an inexpressibly sweet smile on her aged face, died in her arms. It was a hard-won, oddly peaceful death for one who, even as an old woman, was able to kill an ancient Noble. The girl regretted that her curiosity at how Leila had managed that feat would be forever unfulfilled.

She left Leila there, while she returned to her modest, lonely house. She wheeled out the excavator she'd purchased after Leila had left. As if in a pre-ordained dream, she toted it up to the grave, aimed carefully, and used the shaped laser to dig a second grave alongside the first. It took her most of the day to set things up to her satisfaction. Perhaps Leila's family would prefer to bury her in a family plot, among her kin, but...

It seemed right to bury Leila in a grave next to that of D, the Vampire Hunter -- whose death she had avenged with her own two hands. Some connections bind deeper than family. Perhaps D wouldn't have cared, but the girl sensed that Leila's connection to D had been that strong. This is where Leila had chosen to die, so this is where the girl took it upon herself to bury her.

After wrapping the thin and frail body of the old woman in clean white sheets, she placed her reverently in a crude, simply-crafted wooden coffin that was nonetheless equipped with all the protections to ensure the body placed within would rest peacefully. She buried the coffin first with flowers, then covered it over with dirt. She harvested all the flowers and flowering herbs from her own gardens to cover Leila's grave, just as Leila had covered D's. She used a micro art laser, and a flat piece of titanium, to craft a marker of sorts for the twin graves.

She thought long and hard about what she wanted to say. She knew neither D's nor Leila's family names, and none of the history of their lives but for their deaths. She settled, slightly unhappily, with two simple lines designed to show where they were, if family ever troubled to look for them.

After etching the marker, she left the laser on and set it against one of the walls of her house. She gathered the few things she decided to bring with her into her new life, and trudged up the hill a final time. Along the way she draped a metal chain from which her handiwork depended with a flower-muffled metallic thunk over the crosspiece of the sword, and took a single flower from the mound over D's grave.

The smoke from her burning home curled into the dusking sky as she turned and walked down the other side of the hill, never looking back. A lone shaft of sunset light dazzled across the new placard on D's sword.

_Here lies D, the Vampire Hunter, struck down by a cowardly Noble's blow. _

_Slaying that Noble earned Leila the right to place flowers on his grave._

-end-


End file.
